This emerging hiring practice causes lasting damage to companies

A Clemson University professor says employers who “ghost” job candidates are causing long-lasting damage to their companies.

Philip Roth, Trevillian Distinguished Professor in the Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business , has earned national recognition for new research examining a growing problem in the modern job market.

The research explores what happens when employers abruptly stop communicating with job candidates after in-person interviews, without explanation or closure. While ghosting has become a familiar term in dating and online culture, Roth said it has increasingly become part of the hiring process as well.

“I think technology allows organizations to treat people like commodities,” Roth said in a university news release. “We used to expect fair and equitable interpersonal treatment from organizations when they conveyed how well a person performed in the interview and whether the applicant moved on to the next step of the selection process. This led to feelings of being treated justly. Post-interview ghosting is going in the other direction.”

The study found that the effects on applicants are not mild inconveniences or temporary frustrations. Instead, ghosting produces powerful and lasting anger-based emotional reactions that can damage an organization’s reputation and future hiring efforts, Roth said.

Roth and his co-authors — Clemson doctoral students Hyunji Suh and Emily Ferrise, along with collaborators from other institutions — conducted two studies examining how applicants respond after being ghosted following in-person interviews. Their larger study surveyed 390 U.S. working professionals, many of whom had experienced ghosting during recent job searches.

The researchers found that applicants who were ghosted perceived organizations as significantly less fair and less respectful. Those feelings often evolved into what the study describes as “ressentiment,” a cluster of emotions including anger, resentment and hostility.

Those emotions had major downstream effects, according to the research.

Applicants who experienced higher levels of resentment viewed organizations more negatively and were substantially less likely to pursue future employment opportunities with them. At the same time, ghosting increased the likelihood of retaliatory behavior and even schadenfreude — taking satisfaction in an organization’s misfortunes — increased in likelihood.

“Our study directly addresses how the applicant thinks about the organization’s reputation, whether they would reapply in the future, so organizations could be diminishing their own applicant pools in the future,” Roth said. “We also talk about the dark side. Do people want to do things like complain to the organization just to take up time and get back at them?”

One of the study’s most striking findings was the magnitude of the effects.

“If you look at the relationship between ghosting and organizational image, ghosting and intent to pursue, retaliation and schadenfreude, these are big effect sizes by social science standards,” Roth said. “It’s not like people feel a little bit more this way. The effects are powerful — far stronger than I thought they would be.”

The research also suggests the damage does not quickly fade. The study found little evidence that applicants simply “get over” being ghosted as time passes. In some cases, especially among college students, negative feelings actually intensified over time.

“I think these negative emotions last for a long, long time,” Roth said. “Companies may think time heals all wounds, but those feelings of injustice and those negative emotions, they stay.”

The findings point to significant consequences for employers, particularly at a time when organizations compete aggressively for talent and increasingly rely on employer branding to attract applicants.

Roth said one of the clearest takeaways from the study is that organizations can protect themselves from many of these negative outcomes through something relatively simple: respectful communication.

The study found that informational justice — communicating clearly and promptly with applicants, even when delivering disappointing news — was related to improved organizational image and applicants’ willingness to apply again in the future.

“Be civil, be gracious,” Roth said. “In this day and age, you can craft a nice ‘thank you, but no thank you’ letter that doesn’t put your company in a negative light. Stop making excuses and just be civil and gracious.”

He added that organizations that communicate respectfully may gain an advantage in a hiring environment where ghosting has become increasingly common.

“They insulate themselves from a tarnished image,” Roth said. “The applicant is more likely to reapply in the future, and we know in HR that the bigger the applicant pool, the more likely you are to find a better fit.”

Roth teaches organizational behavior and human resource management in the Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business. He is a fellow of the Academy of Management, the American Psychological Society and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

Roth’s paper, “Post-Interview Ghosting Casts Dark Shadows on Applicant Reactions,” was selected as one of the top papers accepted for presentation at the 86th annual meeting of the Academy of Management, which will be held July 31-Aug. 4 in Philadelphia.